The Slough Of Despond

The Crab Nebula 

The sky a seems to have sunk into a Slough of Despond at the moment, which is of course is a deep bog in John Bunyan's, The Pilgrim's Progress, into which the character Christian sinks under the weight of his sins and his sense of guilt for them, not that you should necessarily do this, but that is of course between you and your conscience. There really is nothing much happening, and certainly not before midnight.

So in the absence of any planets in the evening star, except of course a setting Jupiter, and with the waning moon rising later all the time, it may be a good time to look for some deeper sky objects. There’s the winter star cluster M41, visible in binoculars about one binocular field south of Sirius, It contains about 100 stars including several red giants, Its age is estimated at between 190 and 240 million years old. So compared to the Sun, its stars are still in nappies.

You could also like between the horns of Taurus? Taurus is easily spotted just above Orion, the horns sweeping backward from Aldebaran, the bulls baleful red eye. You should see a hazy smudge which is the Crab Nebula.

And then there’s the Andromeda galaxy around half way between Cassiopeia and Pegasus. There’s a link below if you want to have a go.

 

Finding Andromeda.

As for the planets Mercury, Mars, and Neptune are hidden behind the glare of the Sun. But Venus is still there shining brightly in Sagittarius) shines as the "Morning Star" in the southeast just before and during dawn.

Jupiter shines brightly in the west at dusk and sets roughly an hour after dark now. But by 8:45 the giant planet has set.

Saturn rises at 10p.m., in the south east, you may get a glimpse of the rings in binoculars, and they’re at a reasonable angle to us now.

Uranus is a bout 7° west (lower right) of Jupiter and disappearing into the evening twilight. And it’s easier to see with the naked eye now as it moves away from Jupiter’s glare, but it’s very dim.

On that was your nights sky for the week ending on the 72^nd anniversary of the erroneous word "Dord" being discovered in the Webster's New International Dictionary, Second Edition, prompting an investigation. It seems it was submitted as capital D or d as an abbreviation for density but through a shameful example of howling ineptitude it went in as Dord, which is fascinating.